1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a software management system that manages software programs installed in managed devices, and in particularly to a software management device that is able to update software programs of managed devices by downloading software-updating modules via communication lines.
The present application claims priority on Japanese Patent Application No. 2011-21496 filed Feb. 3, 2011, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, software programs are updated to fix minor drawbacks and to slightly improve their functionality by implementing software-updating modules having relatively small sizes. For this reason, authorized users are allowed to download software-updating modules via the Internet without payment or with payment of a fee.
Information systems installed in large companies involve numerous computers, causing congested access to servers for distributing software-updating modules, wherein a very high load of processing may be imparted to networks connecting between servers and computers.
As a technology for solving this problem, a management server can be arranged in the information system of a company to download software-updating modules so as to distribute them to computers.
In this technology, however, the management server of an information system simply manages the types of software installed in computers but does not manage the versions of software actually applied to computers. For this reason, the management server is designed to normally download all the software-updating modules with respect to computers irrespective of the status as to whether or not software-updating modules have been already applied to computers. In other words, this technology may download unnecessary software-updating modules which have been already applied to computers, thus causing an additional load of processing to networks or storages.
There is another technology, namely a software resource delivery technology, applied to a client server system with a three-layer structure consisting of a host server, an intermediate server, and a client. Patent Document 1 (i.e. Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-80167) discloses a software resource delivery system that implements an efficient and highly-reliable delivery of current software resources to a client via a network system with a limited networking function which is unable to deliver data from a host server to an intermediate server or client. In this system, the intermediate server retrieves software resources stored in the host server so as to store them in a memory. The intermediate server monitors the updated conditions of software resources stored in the host server so as to update software resources, stored in the memory, with current software resources. Subsequently, the intermediate server notifies the client of the updated events of software resources. The client retrieves software resources, which need to be installed therein, from among software resources stored in the intermediate server so as to store them in the memory. Upon receipt of an update notice pertaining to a certain software resource, the client reads a currently updated software resource from the intermediate server so as to update the software resource stored in the memory.
The software resource delivery system of Patent Document 1 updates software resources with a client upon receiving a notification of update information from an intermediate server or upon checking update information when it starts operation. This prevents the client from carrying out erroneous operation using old software.
In the software resource delivery system of Patent Document 1, the intermediate server manages the types of software actually utilized by the client. For this reason, this system is very helpful to an information system which uniformly installs software to clients.
In the software resource delivery system of Patent Document 1, however, the intermediate server does not manage the types of software utilized by clients in real time. This system is not beneficial to another information system which does not uniformly install software to clients. Additionally, this system is not able to handle software programs which users install to clients without notices to system administrators, or drivers of peripheral devices.